#degradation

As she uttered the words of the prayer, she glanced up at him as if he were God Himself. He watched her with growing pleasure. In front of him was kneeling the directress, being humiliated by a subordinate; in front of him a naked revolutionary was being humiliated by prayer; in front of him a praying lady was being humiliated by her nakedness. This threefold image of degradation intoxicated him and something unexpected suddenly happened: his body revoked its passive resistance. Edward was excited! As the directress said, 'And lead us not into temptation,' he quickly threw off all his clothes. When she said, 'Amen,' he violently lifted her off the floor and dragged her onto the couch. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#degradation #humiliation #lust #sex #love

We are the hands and eyes and ears, the sensitive probing feelers through which the emergent, intelligent universe comes to know its own form and purpose. We bring the thunderbolt of meaning and significance to unconscious matter, blank paper, the night sky. We are already divine magicians, already supergods. Why shouldn't we use all our brilliance to leap in as many single bounds as it takes to a world beyond ours, threatened by overpopulation, mass species extinction, environmental degradation, hunger, and exploitation? Superman and his pals would figure a way out of any stupid cul-de-sac we could find ourselves in - and we made Superman, after all. All it takes is that one magic word. ↗

— Grant Morrison

#extinction #overpopulation #superman #intelligence

Judging by my degradation in the last 24 hours, I'll be surprised if I make it to Tuesday. ↗

— Aron Ralston

#hours #i #judging #last #make

Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders. ↗

— Warren Christopher

#borders #crime #degradation #movements #narcotics

The national debate on health care once centered on improving access to quality care, yet the effect of Obamacare will be the exact opposite, resulting in the shameful degradation of care for the neediest individuals. ↗

— Fred Upton

#care #centered #debate #degradation #effect

My background is degradation and sloth, mostly. ↗

— Larry David

#degradation #mostly #sloth

But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the thing it looks upon to bless. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#human-impact #industrial-revolution #death

Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be. ↗

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

#duty #his #life #man #manner

But it will be said that the husband provides for the wife, or in other words, he feeds, clothes and shelters her! I wish I had the power to make every one before me fully realize the degradation contained in that idea. ↗

— Ernestine Rose

#clothes #contained #degradation #every #feeds

I think I would much rather push the boundaries of the degradation that the characters face. ↗

— Dave Rowntree

#characters #degradation #face #i #i think